The Effectiveness of Total Physical Response (TPR) on Teaching English to Young Learners

Abstract

This article through two teachers’ cases, namely, observation of two teachers’ classes and interview with them, interview with their students and their students’ parents, attempts to investigate the effectiveness of TPR as a classroom technique with young learners and to explore how teachers use TPR and to identify some of the challenges of using it in practice. All the findings are discussed referring back to the relevant literature review and context. The findings of observation indicate that the TPR technique is a good way on the basis of games, role-play, storytelling and pair works with the physical actions. It also finds some potential factors that contribute to TPR’s challenges in practice, such as the use of traditional method, training constraints, students’ low English proficiency, the lack of authentic environment and exam-oriented assessment. The findings from the various angles obtained seem to be very similar to those reported earlier by literature review. This study also makes a contribution to the existing literature in terms of the providing insights into the attitudes toward English education for parents or students, and the lack of parents’ supervision to some extent that they have influenced on the TPR. Importantly, through a systemic introduction of TPR in this study, it is useful to help future teachers to implement TPR methods into their young learner teaching. The results of this study can also help me to reflect on my own teaching approaches and support other teachers working in my college.